Life happens. You laugh about it or cry about it, sometimes both.

Baking with Babies

by judy on March 16, 2013

Today I baked some cookies and I let Stephen help me. Okay, I did it while we were home alone this morning and I was hoping this activity would keep him interested for a while and eat up some of our morning. And it worked. He was actually pretty excited to help!

We put on aprons. I folded Jeremy’s apron so it wouldn’t drag on the floor when Stephen wore it. I pulled a kid stool over to the kitchen counter so Stephen could stand on it and see what I was doing. I showed him the stuff I put in the mixing bowl. I let him try to stir the butter and sugar together. I gave him a taste of creamed butter and sugar. Then he wanted a taste of every subsequent step, but that was okay. It was pretty easy to deflect his reaching finger.

His favorite part was dumping the cups of rolled oats into the mixing bowl. I would pour the oats into the cup measure, hold the mixing bowl down where Stephen could reach, and help him flip the cup so the oats dumped into the bowl. The recipe called for 3 cups of oats. 3 cups of awesome.

I spilled some chocolate chips on the counter when I measured those out. Stephen put a couple back in the cup for me, but he also ate one or two. I didn’t mind.

The most difficult part for him was watching me spoon lumps of cookie dough onto the baking sheet. He really wanted to grab a cookie!

Luckily he didn’t start losing attention until the first batch went in the oven. Frankly, I’m surprised he lasted that long. Oh well, I guess it’s time to admit to myself that I’m just an awesome mom who thinks of really engaging activities full of teachable moments.

Don’t worry, I did give him a delicious cookie after the first batch cooled enough to eat. It was a pretty fun morning. And he is totally my baking good luck charm now. This is the first time in, like, ever that I have made exactly as many cookies as the recipe claims I will be able to make. 6 dozen, boom baby!

I had fully intended to make Jeremy take a picture of us in our aprons so I could post it with this blog entry, but the afternoon totally got away from us for reasons that I will divulge possibly on Monday or Tuesday. All I’ll say is the evening ended with Chinese take out and The Muppet Movie on Netflix. And beer.